Nick Thomadis

Hello Admirals, We would like to share information about the upcoming major update of Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts. Here is what is included: Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Alpha-5 SPECIAL NEW FEATURES Major improvements in ballistics: Repaired issues that made shells to travel at unusual wide arcs or at inconsistent speeds. Shells now can hit other vessels except the ship you target, making cluttered ship formations more vulnerable to shell fire. Friendly fire can happen if ships fire too close to each other. Previous ballistic system had some omissions that were needed to save game performance. After latest game optimizations we added more calculations into the model addressing the following: - Shells fly-through other ships: Completely fixed. Please report inconsistencies if you face them in battle. - Unusual wide arcs from guns of the same turret: Not completely fixed, but it should be barely noticeable now and very rare. - Shells that seem to follow targets during evasive maneuvers: It should be completely fixed and more improvements will follow to address any related issue. - Even more detailed calculations for effective armor thickness, based on heel/trim motions, hull sections, belt wideness etc: Improved but still work in progress. Improved damage system: Damage is now using a more natural probabilistic model, causing less random and more consistent damage to ships according to the damage power of shells and torpedoes. This new system will simulate better the rare critical hits that happened in history. Gun visual variance: Guns differ in appearance,depending on gun technology, nation and class of the ships. Britain, USA, Germany, Austria, Italy and Japan have currently the more diverse visualization. As we add more 3D model assets, more special visual characteristics for each nation will become available. (Note: All previously saved designs will be incompatible due to this new feature and it is advised to clean them up. Nation flag will be saved for any newly created design in Naval Academy.) Ramming damage: Finally, ships receive damage when they collide with each other. There is not a special visual effect yet but you will hear a distinctive sound effect after the collision. Known issues of inconsistent ramming damage will be addressed in a next update. (Note: Damage will happen against hostile ships only). Influx of new ship models: Many new ship types are now available in the custom battle system and Naval Academy, covering a wide range of cruisers of the World War I and later era, as well as several new modern battleships and battlecruisers. In particular the following are added: - Detailed model of the Italian Heavy cruiser “Trento” of the 1920s. - Detailed model of the British Armored cruiser “Warrior”. - 2 new light cruisers of the dreadnought era, special for Germany, based on the Light Cruiser “Emden”. - 7 new heavy cruisers distributed for all nations. - 5 new modern light cruisers distributed for all nations. - 1 French super battleship. - 1 French modern battleship. - 1 new USA Battleship hull type: a smaller version of modern BB that can represent South Carolina and South Dakota battleships. - 1 new Italian Modern Battleship hull type. - 1 new UK Battleship hull type: It can represent a variant of HMS Nelson and generally the N3/G3 class. - 6 new Battlecruisers designated as "Large Cruisers" distributed for all nations except Britain. - Improved a late UK Battleship with modern towers (The model that appears in mission “German Pride”). - 1 new Russian modernized Battleship. - 1 new generic modernized Battleship. NEW NAVAL ACADEMY MISSIONS German Raiding Squadron: Your light cruisers must sink several cargo ships defended by a British armored cruiser. An enemy Battlecruiser approaches so you need to act fast. Dreadnought vs Modern Cruisers: Powerful modern cruisers with state of the art fire control and devastating torpedoes should have no problem sinking a dreadnought of older technology. You can prove the opposite, either by enhancing your battleships with equipment of advanced technology, or investing more money for building more ships. Wounded Beast: Your German battleship is damaged from a previous engagement and is hunted by the British fleet. Reinforcements are on their way to help you out. Cruisers needed: An Italian Battleship is chased by a French Super-Battleship and your cruisers must rescue it. SHIP DESIGNER IMPROVEMENTS Operational Range is locked in “Medium” for Naval Academy (it will work fully in campaign). The player will no longer exploit the system by setting it at minimum range and create overpowered ships versus the AI. Several improvements/fixes in weights/costs of ship assets. AI will design more effectively the ships allocating weights for guns and speed in a more balanced manner. AI will increase Turret armor over technology era and this will be a necessity for player too, for reducing the chance of ammo detonations and main gun destruction. (Note: in late era battles, the maximum armor setting will usually correspond to the turret armor now. We will improve UI to be more specific). Auto-Design (for player and AI) is now smarter, since it realizes which technologies are better to use according to year. For example, you will no longer see ships auto-designed with full coal engines in the 1920s or with weak torpedoes. PS.The initial technologies will be set up according to tech era, so that player designs the ship from scratch with less micromanagement. Various improvements/fixes to hulls according to player reports. Deceleration of ship is now properly affected from various ship design decisions. (Previously it was only affected by ship’s size and weight). Turbo Electric Drive auxiliary engines now offer a significant boost to acceleration/deceleration, making them really effective for initiating sharp maneuvers and dodging torpedoes. One more upgrade (Turbo Electric Drive II) is available with stronger effects. Light Cruisers’ maximum gun size is now 7-inches (from 8-inches) so that we reflect better the class distinction between Light and Heavy Cruisers. BALANCES/COMBAT IMPROVEMENT Damage fine tuning according to the new ballistics/damage model. Smoke from funnels obstructs directionally the gun aiming. Accuracy penalty is received if the smoke emitted from the ship’s funnels interferes with the target at some angle. Reduced target signature of guns. It is now more balanced the effect of ship size and targeting, while player should no longer be able to exploit Naval Academy battles by over-reducing the target signature with less secondary guns. Torpedoes can now cause ammo detonation, if they penetrate the hull. Torpedoes of large diameter will be extremely dangerous, even to large and well protected battleships. White powder shells rebalanced (removed shell weight loss, because it made shells too ineffective with bad ballistics at medium range). Lyddite I shells penetration penalty reduced (They could become too weak). BUG FIXES Fixed a rare crash issue after exiting battle. Fixed a sound bug (it caused only a console report during battle). Fixed bug not allowing to set up target for individual ship of a division. Fixed an issue that could cause lag after exiting a custom battle. Fixed bug that could desync damage of gun & barbette, making them become destroyed independently. OTHER Transport ships became available in custom battles. You can now set up convoy missions as you please (Note: Transports will still be uncontrollable). Improved ship floatation motions. Ships should not pitch/roll so much as before, especially the heavier ships.

We try to offer this in the upcoming patches. Very glad you enjoy the game!

These 2 are features of the upcoming patch 🙂 Destroyers will arrive afterwards.

Target signature is going to be improved in upcoming patch. Guns will not have such drastic effect and player will not exploit this to create less targetable ships by having less secondary guns.

We do prioritize to fix in next updates. It was just an issue we considered less important than having ships not firing torps or an idle AI.

They have a limited rotation range, to make them useful in gameplay. Otherwise, most players would argue why their ships do not fire torpedoes.

Can you elaborate on that? How are 7 inch guns as deadly as 13 inch guns?

Known issue, thanks, we will fix this.

In most cases a fire delay is expected. Fire delay can be caused: - By slow gun rotation (if all guns reloaded but ship turns too fast). Gun rotation speed is related to tech, so if ship has very big turrets and slow rotation mechanism, it sometimes it might delay too much to fire, depending on target orientation. This is 90% the reason of the issue reported. - By random aiming delay. - Gun is blocked by some obstacle, so it never fires, and waits for next reload cycle. We have not found yet any other reason, a bug that is critical, to look to it further. PS. In next patch we fix various issues with ballistics, so any such related bug should be resolved.

This is already included for next patch.

A slight Weight offset fore or aft is expected in ship design according to the objects mounted on ship and affects the metacentric stability of the ship in an expected way. The weight offset across the beam, even if everything is placed symmetrically, is a minor known issue to some hulls, that is going to be addressed in next patch.

The penetration info updates also according to the angle of the target ship, so this can be a reason of a low pen chance.

This is a feature that is many times requested. We have not been able to offer quadruple turrets, but it is something we want to offer. It will depend on the progress of our other main priorities = campaign/crew You can already combine optical rangefinders and special radar rangefinders for increasing accuracy, aiming and spotting. We want to offer more option for Director systems and Radar, we shall gradually.

Barrel length is something already considered but we are far from putting it in our priorities list, because we have to focus development on crew and campaign. Using guns of lower technology is something more complex than it appears, it will need more work and therefore we cannot promise it at all. When we make all the necessary for the game, we can develop this and other similar details of the ship design system.

I answered about pagoda towers. Superstructure will work as now.

It is possible, because we continuously add new base models and towers, but we cannot promise when, since we have more important modelling priorities for covering the most important ship visuals of the era. We will try.

A new hotfix has been deployed Admirals! Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts Alpha 4 v68 HotFix (13/2/2020) Increased damage of main guns. The whole damage model should feel now much more realistic, as intended for the main update. Reduced base accuracy for secondary guns. On average their accuracy is inferior compared to main guns but they will aim progress more effectively when targeting fast vessels. Flooding should happen more often when guns hit underwater sections. - Flooding will not be repaired so fast, so it will have a noticeable impact on large capital ships. Increased slightly the damage of torpedoes. Torpedo protection effect reduced slightly so that late battleships do not become immune to torpedoes. Increased base speed of torpedoes about +2 knots. They could become unhistorically too slow at their maximum range settings, creating targeting issues (Ships not firing torps at long range, firing at too wide arcs and hitting themselves etc.). Decrease speed penalty of electric torpedoes from -30% to -25%. Weight issues making ships, especially battlecruisers, too fast for their size have been resolved. A ship may still be designed to exceed the 40 knots but with much greater sacrifices in armament and protection. Fixed an issue with German Battlecruisers (They were unavailable for a small time period between 1924-1929 in custom battles). Fixed issues that made Torpedo Boats (TB) either too slow or too vulnerable to gun fire. Fixed a problem with a British BB of the 1920s that made its hull too long. - Allocated more funds to mission "Hurry Up" to allow strong ships of higher speed. AI & Gun Targeting Improvement. Other minor fixes. ===================================================== This hotfix aims to improve the gameplay and repair the most important issues that were reported.

Thank you, we will add this fix to the upcoming HotFix Update.

Thank you all for the ongoing feedback. We prepare a hotfix that will improve most if not all of those you report to us regarding damage, as well as other fixes. Thank you for the support.

Can you please report this issue also with the game button, so we fix asap?

Do you use a very high resolution monitor? Can you play with reduced resolutions settings of 1080p?

We will offer a bigger dockyard for the super battleships, in next updates. AI here tried to squeeze very big advanced guns, in a small hull of older technology (Custom Battle hulls are not yet optimized according to era, so some of them to become obsolete). It can do much better surely. Let's accept that humans can do such mistakes too.

Turret types are depended on technology era. Try battles between 1926 and 1935.

Ok then it is not really a big issue, we can just hide unusable mounts of some towers, later.

These mount points should not be usable if there is not enough hull space. Are they usable?